No global warming at City Light

Electrical utility halts 'net emissions' of greenhouse gases

Seattle City Light is no longer contributing to global warming, a feat no other major public utility in the nation has accomplished, officials announced Wednesday.

"We can power our city without toasting the planet," boasted Mayor Greg Nickels from the utility's control center in Ballard.

City Light has reached a goal set 10 years ago of no "net emissions" of greenhouse gases through conservation, an emphasis on renewable energy and paying others to curb pollution.

More than 90 percent of the electricity sold by the utility last year came from hydroelectric dams, with nuclear plants providing 4 percent. Smaller amounts were tapped from wind farms, and natural gas- and coal-fired power plants.

City Light operations are still responsible for annually releasing greenhouse gases that cause damage equal to 200,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide. That's comparable to the tailpipe emissions from 44,000 cars.

But for every pound of greenhouse gas released by the utility, its fleet of vehicles or the power plants it buys from, steps are being taken to reduce emissions elsewhere by an equal amount.

Toward that end, City Light spends up to $756,000 a year. Some of the money goes to running Metro buses, garbage trucks and city vehicles on a mix of diesel and biodiesel, a fuel made from plants that's cleaner to produce and burn.

When Princess Cruises' ships began plugging into Seattle's electrical grid instead of running off dirtier diesel engines while in port, the city paid the company and in turn was credited for reducing pollution.

On a national level, City Light also paid for the pollution cut when concrete plants switched to a cleaner manufacturing process and for DuPont Fluorochemicals to reduce its emissions of Freon gas. The deal with DuPont was a major factor in reaching the Seattle pollution goal, officials said.

The idea of paying companies and agencies for the volume of pollution they're not producing "is extremely weird," admitted Doug Howell, who works on climate issues for King County and used to work for City Light. "It's a very squishy business."

But the projects funded by the city are "transparent and accountable," he said.

Although the emissions goal is being met today, power-supply demands in Seattle and its suburbs increase about 1 percent a year. Global warming could put a strain on hydropower as snowpacks shrink and river flows change.

The utility will continue to look to conservation and renewable energy to keep greenhouse gas emissions low, said Jorge Carrasco, City Light's superintendent. But public support has been tepid for a voluntary clean energy program.

Started three years ago, the Green Up program asks residential and business customers to chip in a little extra to pay for wind and solar energy projects, but only 1.2 percent of the 370,000 ratepayers are participating.